


in other words

by bossymarmalade (maggie)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-01
Updated: 2007-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggie/pseuds/bossymarmalade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>scott in the fading strains of the x-cutioner's song</p>
            </blockquote>





	in other words

**Author's Note:**

> standard foreword: if i have written something problematic/oppressive to a marginalized group that you find hurtful, please please please don't think twice about telling me. i will never spew hate at you, will never attack you, and i will always thank you and make the change.

In his dreams, Scott Summers sees the moon. He sees it the way that most people don't ever get a chance to, in sharp close focus of sterile rock and impassive cold. He sees marks on its surface exactly the same as when they were first made years ago, and can't help thinking they look like scars.

He wakes up sweating, eyes and chest burning, and forces himself not to remember.

...

Jean slumps against him on the ride back, exhausted with the physical pain of their ordeal at Stryfe's hands and wrung out from weeping. Everybody is so subdued; Alex and Sam patter at each other up front, all _sotto voce_ technicalities of keeping the ship flying straight and polite need to make noise, and Lorna curls up in her seat and bites her thumbnail to the quick.

Scott can't blame them. It's a lot to take in. If it weren't for the absurdities of his own life that he's learned to deal with (it's a complicated thing to reconcile the father you thought was dead showing up and telling you he's a _space pirate_, for example) he'd probably be tense and strung-out too. But it's not like that for him, not at this point. At this point he's doing his best to let his body rest during this immediate post-trauma numbness, because he knows what comes next.

"You doing okay, Scott?" Lorna tips her head in his direction and Alex glances back; Sam won't look. Scott nods and Lorna continues, "—maybe we should get you some oxygen. Might make you feel better after what you went through."

His throat instantly constricts at the memory of him and Jean bursting out of Stryfe's compound onto the airless surface of the moon and Lorna's eyes tighten, seeing the stress, so Scott hastens to say, "no, no – it's all right. I'm fine," before she magnetically retrieves the oxygen tank for him.

Jean makes a tiny choked noise in her sleep. She's still strapped into her seat same as Scott is, so most of her weight is held up by the belt, just bits of her brushing against him as she leans heavily over. Scott turns his head so he can rest his face against her hair; it smells and feels frozen, and he breathes it in like punishment.

...

"Hey there."

Scott doesn't bother to look up. He refolds his arms on the cold rampway railing and rests his chin against the back of one wrist as his brother comes up next to him and stands quietly for a few moments, staring down at the empty hangar bay while obviously weighing how to start this conversation.

"It's okay, Alex," Scott says through his teeth. It's comforting, somehow, the pressure at the hinges of his jaw and the thready compressed sound of his voice as his chin pokes against his arm with each word. It makes him feel somehow more … contained. Less spread-out and scattered among the stars. Alex shifts and Scott continues, "you don't have to make all the requisite sympathetic overtures."

"Ahhhh," Alex nods. "We're skipping right ahead to the litany of reasons you shouldn't forgive yourself, then? Good to know."

Scott lifts his head enough to frown at Alex, who looks annoyingly unperturbed. "Leading X-Factor isn't doing that smart-alecky streak of yours any good," he remarks, and Alex laughs.

"I had no idea what I was getting myself into," he admits. "All those years watching you lead the X-Men and making it look so damn snag-free—"

That makes Scott snort. "You've got to be kidding me," he says, straightening up. "Most days it feels like nothing _but_ snags. Lots of them people-shaped."

"Wouldn't figure it to look at you." Alex turns and leans against the railing on his elbows. When he speaks next, he has that careful and measured tone that never fails to make Scott smile wryly; Alex always had been so deliberate about certain things, even when they were little. It was comforting to see that hadn't changed in all the time they'd been apart and under the influence of whoever it was who had raised him.

"I'll make this brief," Alex says. "What happened up there … you can only be responsible for so much. Giving up Nathan to the Askani, helping Cable defeat Stryfe? You can't take that on. If there's anything that, y'know – possessing power the equal to a small star has taught me – it's having a sense of proportion when it comes to our influence on universal destiny."

"Thank goodness you kept that brief."

"Hey, I work for the government now. You're lucky I didn't have an itemized and notarized five-pager all prepared."

Scott smiles. It's a gift, this easy camaraderie; he's had to work for just about everything in his life, but for the most part their fraternal relationship has endured even through mind-manipulation and romantic cross-purposes and beyond all odds. There's not a day he's not grateful for it. He's acutely aware how tenuous relationships can be.

"Thanks, Alex," he says, and watches until Alex's posture relaxes, accepting. "You make good points. I appreciate it, and I'll think them over."

Alex doesn't doubt him, because he knows if Scott promises to think about something, he will. Scott supposes that from a dramatic standpoint, keeping your promises is pretty boring; that's never bothered him. He suspects he's got enough drama going on as it is.

...

In his dreams, there's space.

Endless space swallowing up his father; the big empty sky that he falls through with his brother clinging to him, heavy and terrified;

–and the moon again, Jean dying and then Nathan dying and then Stryfe – Nathan? A clone? Somebody different? – dying too. It's obscene. So much whimsy associated with the moon, of green cheese and the proverbial old man and all of those silly fanciful fairytale things; Scott knows better than that. He knows that the moon is a place full of cold dirty loss, and blood, and death. It's an ugly reality. But it's one that Scott understands, just like as he understands that somebody always has to make sacrifices for the greater good.

His life has never been much about whimsy, anyhow.


End file.
